DOUG VARONE AND DANCERS | Institute of Contemporary Art | February 18-20 | The linked vignettes that make up Doug Varone's magisterial new Chapters from Broken Novels grew out of snippets of overheard conversation, underlined quotes, and Varone's random notebook musings. This evening-long dance distills movement with intensity and unexpected revelation — set to a vibrant and surprising score by David Van Tieghem. Varone and his gorgeous dancers are at the top of their game: Chapters from Broken Novels is an event not to be missed.

JOSÉ MATEO BALLET THEATRE | Sanctuary Theatre | February 25–March 13 | Beauty Strange brings together more than 15 years of dark repertory chamber ballets by company director José Mateo set to music by Schnittke, Beethoven, and Ginastera, and presented café style in the company's intimate Sanctuary Theatre.

ASPEN SANTA FE BALLET | Tsai Performance Center | March 4-5 | The charming Aspen Santa Fe Ballet comes east with a multicultural repertory that, among other things, will show local audiences what Boston Ballet choreographer Jorma Elo's work looks like when performed by another company. Elo's Red Sweet, created expressly for Aspen Santa Fe's dancers, will be juxtaposed with Jiri Kylian's Stamping Ground and a piece titled Uneven, by Spaniard Cayetano Soto, an up-and-coming Munich-based choreographer.

FALLING FLIGHT PROJECT, EGOART, INC., AND WEBER DANCE | Springstep | March 20 | Karen Murphy-Fitch, Nicole Pierce, and Jody Weber, joined by guest vocalist Jessica Newman and Maine choreographer Carol Dilley, bring their distinctive companies to Springstep in Medford, where selections from their repertory can be seen in a friendly salon setting. This is a good way to be introduced to local dancemakers who sometimes fly under the radar.

BOSTON BALLET ELO EXPERIENCE | Boston Opera House | March 24–April 3 | Boston Ballet gets its busy spring repertory season underway with a close look at the oeuvre of resident choreographer Jorma Elo. Sleek, modernist, and virtuosic, Elo's Brake the Eyes (to Mozart) and Plan to B (to Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber) are reprised alongside a world premiere. Casting hasn't been announced yet, but expect star billing for Russian-born ballerina Larissa Ponomarenko, whom Elo has called his muse. A good date night for the balletically-inclined.

Live! — sort of The success of the Metropolitan Opera's "Live in HD" experiment augurs well for dance on the big screen. Simulcast at select theaters, with tickets priced higher than for a movie but much cheaper than for a live opera, these events generate a sense of anticipation.

Festival Ballet's emotional, sensual Carmen Although the gypsy girl Carmen is most familiar from the 1875 opera of that name by Georges Bizet, local audiences have also become acquainted with the Carmen performed by Festival Ballet, which was commissioned by them and first appreciated in the 2003-04 season.

Among the Oscar shorts, documentaries take the prize The winter blahs are over. The first great cinema treat of 2011: the five surprisingly superb documentary shorts vying for an Academy Award, opening this Friday as "2011 Documentary Oscar Shorts" at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

The Mariinsky In Stravinsky Live opera — at least, live opera from the Met — has been a huge success in movie theaters. (In Boston, the Fenway routinely sells out two screens.) What about not-quite-live dance?

Aspen Santa Fe Ballet blow into Tsai Performance Center Aspen Santa Fe Ballet — all of 10 dancers — blew into the Tsai Performance Center last weekend with a Celebrity Series program that included two choreographers — Jirí Kylián and Jorma Elo — who've been Boston Ballet staples of late.

NICOLE PIERCE WALKS THE WALK | January 16, 2013 Dance maker Nicole Pierce was working the glue gun, constructing mossy objects, papier-mâché thingamabobs and items that she could hang from a net hoisted across the Art Deco balconies of the South End's Villa Victoria Center for the Arts.